Light fixtures creating various effects are getting more and more used in the entertainment industry in order to create various light effects and mood lighting in connection with live shows, TV shows or as a part on architectural installation.
Entertainment light fixtures creates typically light beam having a beam width and a divergence and could for instance be wash/flood fixtures creating a relatively wide light beam with a uniform light distribution or it could be profile fixtures adapted to project image onto a target surface. There is a tendency that more and more of this kind of fixtures are used in each show or each installation and the fixtures gets as a consequence more and more visible for the spectators and/or TV viewers. The light fixtures typically create the lighting effect at a distance from the light fixture it self and the light fixture is thus not as interesting and esthetic to look at. The fixture manufactures tries as a consequence to provide the fixtures with esthetic designs in order to make the fixtures more interesting to look at. However this is very difficult as the housing of the fixtures are typical dependent physical requirements defined by the technical specifications of the fixture such as optics, mechanics, electronics, cooling etc.
The LED component has further as a light source changed the look of most lighting luminaries, when using multiple LEDs to replace a single light source. This implies for all lighting industries—general, domestic, industrial, entertainment etc. The most visible change is that all multiple light sources are now exposed to the viewer and the light emits from a larger area. If the light luminaire is a color mixing version with single color LEDs, then all LED colors used are visible. Now that most LED fixtures have visible LEDs, some customers dislike the look of multiple light dots. Instead a more uniform, even light exit is requested, to avoid the cheap looking “funfair” look with an extreme amount of light sources.
Lately it there has been a trend to set up a large number of moving head light fixtures in a matrix controlled by a central controller. In these systems the central controlled can treated each moving head light fixture as pixel and thereby use the matrix of moving head light fixtures as a video display, where each pixel can move. This creates new light effect as various effects can be created by combining the movement of each pixel with the video content. Further various of mid air effect can be created when haze or air issued connection with these displays as the light emitted by the moving heads light fixtures can be scattered by the smoke and/or haze.